The present invention relates to devices that permit repeated access to the peritoneal or thoracic cavities. More particularly, the invention relates to a peritoneal and thoracic cavity port catheter.
Certain medical conditions (e.g., ovarian cancer) are treated by infusing a body cavity with a fluid medical preparation through a catheter with one or more infusion holes at a distal end thereof and with an access port or other such device at a proximal end thereof.
In the case of ovarian cancer, the radioactive isotope P32 is administered in a fluid medium infused into the peritoneal cavity, in which the patient's ovaries are located. When ovarian cancer metastasizes or spreads from the ovaries, the cancer cells simply fall off of the ovaries and spread around the peritoneal cavity, but generally do not enter the blood stream. Therefore, a therapy, which floods the peritoneal cavity with P32, is effective, without unnecessarily exposing the patient to radioactivity in undesired areas. However, ovarian cancer cells, having somewhat defective cell membranes, leak fluids, called ascites, into the peritoneal cavity. Treatment of ovarian cancer includes removal of this fluid. The procedure for doing so typically uses the same catheter through which the infusion is performed, and takes about four hours, requiring hospitalization, and is performed about once a week.
Because conventional infusion catheters are optimized for infusion, they can only be used to remove fluids from the peritoneal cavity very slowly, resulting in the long, periodic hospitalization for ovarian cancer patients.
There are similar needs under some circumstances to have access to the thoracic cavity or other body cavities, and current devices for obtaining such are similarly limited.